Ken McGrail, a software engineer for a Seattle, Wash. area enterprise software company, has turned a hobby making crypto-logoed poker chips into a business. His high quality, professional-looking poker chips have proven popular with both crypto enthusiasts and poker players.

McGrail's website, cryptochips.net, sells these crypto tokens for $2.50 a piece and provides free shipping. The website displays the token designs, both front and back sides. Tokens are 39 mm in diameter, 10 grams in weight, and have full-color printed edges.

In an exclusive interview with CCN, McGrail said he started creating crypto-logoed poker chips because he wanted some type of physical representation for the crypto he was mining. "I got into crypto right around the time Dogecoin was getting popular and tinkering with config files … and upgrading cooling in my rig was what I spent most of my evenings doing," he said.

In search for a physical representation for crypto

"I had seen some metal coins, but the price point just wasn't low enough for me," he said. McGrail tried making coins with full-color resin, but he found this was even more expensive than buying metal coins. "A few weeks later, I was on a plane flying down to Vegas for a conference, and when I saw the poker chips at the casino, it hit me like a ton of bricks."

"The second I got home, I started looking into it, and designed and created my first batch."

In the beginning, McGrail was not looking to turn the crypto tokens into a business. But when he realized how popular the chips were with people he showed them to, he realized there was a market. "Once I started showing them off, people kept offering to buy them from me."

McGrail sold his mining rig parts and invested the proceeds into designing crypto poker chips. "Before I knew it, CryptoChips.net was up and running. Now instead of tweaking GPU settings at night, I design and pack chips. It's become my new hobby and after about a year of doing it, it hasn't bored me."